The Oswego State golf team has been on a roll as of late, and they do not intend on stopping any time soon. They had a slightly slower start to the season in their first invitational at St. Lawrence according to the head golf coach Mike Howard.
“I think we underperformed, we’d only had about two weeks of practice beforehand so you would expect that type of thing,” Howard said.
The team certainly shook out the rust in their next meet when they headed up to the Clarkson invitational as the group took fourth overall as a team with Ryan Fecco placing second overall. After that they headed up to Victor, New York to play in the St. John Fisher invite, where they placed fourth out of five teams. Despite the loss, they improved by 18 strokes as a team from the day one outing to the day two outing.
There was no rest for them after that impressive outing though as it was straight to the Elmira Fall invitational. No rest was needed as it turns out with the team successfully claiming the second place finish out of 12 other teams, an extremely successful day. Fecco once again led the team putting up an impressive score of 77 and bagging himself the second place spot overall out of 59 other competitors while tyin another competitor. Jake Owens was only a stroke behind him, giving him the fourth spot overall tying him with two other golfers. Tyler Kozlowski finished with a score of 85 putting him tied for 18th place and Max Mastrogiacomo as well as Tyler Donohue both finished with scores of 88 tying them both in 25th place.
Max Mastrogiacomo said though the course is intimidating, he tries not to let it impact his play.
“You just can’t let it get you down, you have to get past all the early struggles.” Mastrogiacomo said.
It was an overall great day for the team and it makes the future all the more bright. The team will be defending their turf at the Oswego Country Club on Sept. 25 for the annual Oswego Fall Invite. This is another huge invitational for them, it is always bigger when you are on the course you practice on.
They know the course, they know all the tricks and good spots to hit the ball. That means they can focus on some of the smaller aspects of their game so they can really hone in on some of those just as crucial skills.
Mastrogiacomo hopes to use this to his advantage and improve his putting.
“I think for me putting has been a struggle as of late, at Elmira I wasn’t putting the way I wanted to so that’s something to work on,” Mastrogiacomo said.
The team will be taking on a number of different teams in this invitational, including St. John Fisher, the team that everyone on Oswego State is eager to beat.
“It’s simple, they are the team to beat. We’ve been getting closer and closer and I really think we can beat them,” Howard said.
Even though it is not until the spring, the Empire 8 championship is already on Fecco’s mind.
“The ultimate goal is to win the conference championship, I really think we have the squad to do it this year,” Fecco said.
He is ready and has proven to be one of the stronger golfers in the Empire 8. The Lakers have a little bit of a break between matches before they host the Oswego Fall Invite on Sept. 24 and 25.
Photo via Oswego Athletics
